New year resolutions and Gita
On a daily basis, we put up a show because we are supposed to. A never-ending series of screensavers. A little smile here, a little smirk there. A little chuckle here, a little tear there. A little enthusiasm here, a little indifference there. All in all, a splendid display as well as concealment of (true) emotions. We endeavour a lot and we endure a lot more to come up with what we believe defines us. In the end, there is often very little to show though. Everything we once held dear fizzles out with time, leaving us with bare-knuckle existential questions: “Seriously, that’s it?” “All this brouhaha about nothing?” “Ahem, that escalated quickly?”
Not to sound ungrateful but I do wonder, for what are we striving so hard, what exactly do we hope to achieve with our limited contribution to the greater canvas? After all, when we go extinct, we will be nothing less than the last word of a footnote.
I started my tryst with ‘writing’ by compossing really bad poems. Later, I started essaying on varied topics: the idea was to be able to brick in, say, 1000 words, on any given subject. A self-imposed challenge to write better and more importantly, thicker. Poetry allows you a lot of space to wriggle out but prose is a boxing ring where you often get knocked out by your own punches. It was in 2008 that I started dabbling in one-liners, heavy on puns and really short jokes. Turns out that that became my dominant feature on Twitter as well. Over the years, I’ve composed thousands and thousands of quotes on subjects ranging from mundane observations to meta philosophy to sports commentary to cinema reviews to a lot more than 280 (previously 140) characters. However, the problem with writing one-liners on the internet is you don’t get to enjoy the credit because nobody really cares who wrote what. The downside of excessive content. So, in 2022, I am trying something new. Yes, it’s sort of an afterthought but I am excited about seeing some of my quotes getting imprinted on t-shirts by Grow91. Not a published author yet. Published t-shirt for sure. Let’s see how this pans out.
No matter how diverse a childhood is—depending on the financial strength of the parents involved—one event is for certain: the child shall come eye-to-eye with the magical potion hidden in the orange/sweet lime peel. A tiny squeeze and some strange liquidy stuff is sprayed and in contact with eyes, it can turn into a temporary blinder. What a find of a weapon! To this day, I haven’t figured out why exactly do such citric fruits have this natural repellant. I mean, did they evolve to discourage humans and other animals from consuming them? Or were they meant to be as useless as the thorny surface of a jackfruit or a pineapple?
I recently completed Succession’s third season on HBO and while watching those long episodes, I often made predictions that turned out to be on point. If Ken is feeling optimistic, he is bound to flop. Expect Roman to be the black sheep except that he is not a decent enough black sheep. When Shiv shows she is cut out for something, she will be made to take a step back (by her dad, obviously). Let’s not even talk about Con; he remained irrelevant throughout. But above everything else, the show is about a toxic zoo where the inmates can’t live with each other and don’t really trust each other. To an outsider, it’s about money. To an insider, it’s about influence. To the fence-sitter, it’s a raw battle for power. Oh, there is the constant element of love too but only in absence. Conditional love, perhaps, with the lawyers in the room. Otherwise, think about it, why would Shiv love someone like Tom? But then, that also raises a deeper question: why would anyone love anyone?
If you’ve got new year resolutions, make sure you stick to them at least a month. Don’t quit on them—quitting on them is equal to quitting on yourself—for you may be in the best mindset possible for a real change. That’s the beauty of a new start, a new year. It fills your head with cottony expectations and that’s not a bad thing. Each one of us needs an opportunity to go back to neutral and then first gear and then second and then... ok, sorry about the driving references. In other words, January is when you get to find your rhythm back. One day at a time, reaching a month soon. Once you hit February, you would be having a stronger mindset, and here’s the tastiest cookie: only 28 days there. Why so much emphasis on the days? Because as human beings, we have our limitations. We can do certain things and we can't do most things. Best to get done what we can, however we can.
Those who sleep soundly don’t know where they are placed in the pecking order. A rested body has a better chance of bouncing back from an untoward episode. Sleepless pair of eyes most likely prove to be a terrible window to the world. The experts say we must aim to spend one-third of our time (8 hours, to be precise) asleep, either in one go (nocturnal shift) or in two (night sleep + afternoon nap). Yet, there are many amongst us who haven’t slept very well for over a decade now. The kind who wake up on Sunday mornings early simply because they are not used to enjoying the bounties of life. Unless you are in love, there is no excuse for sleeplessness. And even if you are in love, it’s worth wondering where all the sleep you’ve lost on each other goes? Do they accumulate in the sky? Or do they turn into stars?
Ninad, a friend from my Zomato days in Gurgaon, unexpectedly became the first person to visit us in Mangalore after we moved here. This week, Karthik, another friend from Z days, became the second person to visit us. Interestingly enough, Ranga is the common factor between these two accomplished individuals. Both of them love our poor scared dog and were visibly more excited about meeting him than us. To their credit, Ranga recognized both of them instantly. Since our old boy went through some medical issues recently, he wears a neck cone nowadays, which led to the following conversation –
Ninad: “Poor Ranga, the neck collar looks cool but he doesn't seem very happy.”
Me: “He has been sad since he last met you.”
My sentence can mean two things: either Ranga was so happy to see Ninad that he was utterly sad when he left him. Or that Ranga was so sad to meet Ninad that he hasn’t been able to get over that sadness despite Ninad leaving the house.
Some dreams are so warm that you wake up with a twinkle in your eyes. Some dreams are so realistic that you aren’t quite sure whether that happened for real or not. Some dreams are so weird that you are relieved that it never happened. Some dreams are so scary that you finally understand the dark extensions of your twisted brain. Some dreams are so aspirational that you wish you knew how to fly a plane for real. Some dreams are so vague that the screenplay sucks, has bad lighting and overall a forgettable production unit. 1/5 stars max.
Do people around you accuse you of being humble? Been there, done that. There is nothing wrong with being humble as long as you are sure about yourself. Most of us, in this easy-going-fast-moving era are caught between low self-esteem and high faux-modesty. When you think lowly of yourself, there is nobody else who can lift you up. But when you are fully cognizant of your value in the system, even a pretence of humility can be appreciated. At the end of the day, you decide your perception for others. They can merely chime in whereas you own the auditorium called you.
What’s common to Aldous Huxley, Robert Oppenheimer, Carl Sagan, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Annie Besant, TS Eliot, Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer and Hermann Hesse? All hailed from the Western parts of the world and yet not only showed interest in reading Bhagavad Gita but also urged others to do the same. What’s amazing about their take on the timeless book (and its content) is each one of them sound surprised in their reviews. It’s like they started reading something without any agenda and came out on the other side of the tunnel with glowing thoughts. Hollywood actor Will Smith was characteristically emotive when he said that he resonated with Arjuna. But then, who doesn’t? Krishna isn’t for temporal mortals anyway.